Dalton without power for most of Monday

Published: June 27, 2000 12:00 AM

The village and a large swath of surrounding areas were without power much of Monday due to a failed electrical transformer.

Power went out before noon and remained down until about 8:30 p.m. Monday evening.

By the afternoon a mobile replacement for the blown transformer was on its way from Akron to the power station at the corner of Ohio 94 and Church Road.

"At this time, we don't know what caused (the failure)," said Randy Doyle, an Ohio Edison employee.

"There was no evidence of a lightning strike," he said, adding there may have been "an internal failure" in the transformer unit.

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"We won't know the reason for a day or two. Right now our priority is getting the power back on."

The outage affected an area that included Dalton along with its neighbors on all sides. Residents near Alabama Avenue likely were the first to see power restored, Doyle said, as some of the load was transferred to other substations.

"Luckily there are no hospitals affected," he said. One of the area's largest electric consumers was not affected by the outage. Shady Lawn Healthcare Community is serviced by Orrville Municipal Power, an employee said.

The village wastewater treatment plant switched to its on-site generator, street superintendent Curt Denning said. Village residents also had water, thanks to a tractor powering the pumps at the village well site.

Dalton police officers had their hands full directing a heavy traffic load through the intersection of U.S. 30 and Ohio 94.

Without power or air-conditioning, by mid-afternoon a number of businesses and services closed their doors for the day.

Gas pumps were down at Fuel Mart, where employee Jan Stokes took the ice cream home to her own freezer until the power came back on.